Important steps towards a successful Women's EHF EURO 2016

Important steps towards a successful Women's EHF EURO 2016

If there was a countdown clock for the Women's EHF EURO 2016 in Sweden, located somewhere in the country's capital, Stockholm, it would show way more than 1,000 days to go as the final tournament does not throw off until 4 December 2016.

However, planning can never start early enough and therefore a delegation of the Swedish Handball Federation, consisting of vice president Jörg Holmqvist as well as national team commercial managers, Stefan Lövgren and Frank Ström, on Tuesday visited the EHF in Vienna for a first workshop with members of the EURO Events department.

"We are very happy that we have been awarded the right to host this tournament. We want to take this as an opportunity to further develop women's handball and therefore it's vital that we don' let time pass but start working straight away," said Stefan Lövgren who himself won four EHF Euro titles with the Swedish national team.

The meeting's 25-item agenda included topics such as the corporate design concept, the preparation of the venues or accreditation and ticketing guidelines.

"What we discussed today was the overall package," Lövgren said. "A lot of topics were mentioned, we got good feedback from the EHF and are going back to Sweden with quite some homework to do.

"It's exactly this overall package that makes a tournament successful: The accomodation for the players, the venues, the atmosphere, the catering, the transport system - if all these things fall into place, it's going to be a great final tournament," Lövgren added.

The last major tournament that Sweden hosted were the Men's 2011 World Championship. The Men's EHF EURO 2002 and the Women's EHF EURO 2006 also took place in the Scandinavian country.

"These early meetings between the organising committes and European Handball Federation are vital," said the head of the EURO Events department, Monika Flixeder. "The closer we work together the more the success of our flagship national team event will be secured.

"We are looking forward to working with the Swedish organising committee and very confident that they will stage a fantastic championship."

While the Swedish women's national team will be automatically qualified for the event in 2016, many challenges lie ahead in 2013.

In June Sweden will face Poland in the 2013 World Championship Play-Offs. "We go into these matches with a lot of confidence. We have a team with a lot of young talents," Stefan Lövgren said.

"Qualifying for the final tournaments is always the primary goal and, of course, we want to build a competitive team for 2016."